The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada

There is a disturbing trend to normalize the hatred of Jews and the Jewish State as well as to normalize the calls for and actual massacres of Jews among extremists.

No To Zionism And Coexistence

The BDS Movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) provides a “anti-normalization guideline” outlining the philosophy for haters of Israel: “Normalization with/of Israel is, then, the idea of making occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism seem normal and establishing normal relations with the Israeli regime instead of supporting the struggle led by the Indigenous Palestinian people to end the abnormal conditions and structures of oppression.” It adds that its mission is not targeting non-Jewish Israelis but “refers to Jewish-Israelis and Jewish-Israeli institutions.”

The anti-normalization camp has a range of views from only opposing the blockade of Gaza, to objecting to the presence of Jews in the West Bank, to rejecting the basic existence of a Jewish State and any Jews in the region.

The far-left’s Democratic Socialist of America is a growing anti-Zionist party in the United States in both numbers and influence. NYC-DSA asked candidates to pledge to never visit Israel, putting the group on the fringe of the extremists. The socialist site Jacobin applauded DSA’s stance which “offers a model for socialist and progressive politicians who want to take on the powerful pro-Israel lobby,” using antisemitic tropes of Jews as powerful puppet-masters.

The DSA’s own “Anti-Zionist Resolution” was greeted with tremendous support by radical jihadi groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement which penned a letter “Do not allow Zionism to be normalized within your organization. We urge the DSA to truly demonstrate its commitments to revolutionary internationalism by upholding anti-Zionism.”

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), a member of the extremist “squad” believes in variants of this twisted approach. He voted against supporting the Israel Relations Normalization Act backing the Abraham Accords in which Israel established peaceful agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. He shockingly argued that Israel’s normalizing relations with Arab countries would actually undermine peace in the region.

Activist Linda Sarsour took the normalization language a step further, and argued that people shouldn’t “humanize the oppressor,” portraying Jews as non-human.

Yes To Massacres and Intifadas

In June 2023, the DSA Tweeted that no Israeli Jews should be viewed as civilians, that all are fair game to be targeted for violence, and simultaneously granted full absolution to Palestinians violently attacking Israeli Jews.

*DSA Tweet in June 2023 arguing that all Israelis are fair game to target*

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY15) immediately responded “Denying Israelis the status of civilians means declaring them fair game for violence and terror. If a naked justification of terror against Israel is not a sign of a demonic double standard against the Jewish State, I am not sure what would be.”

The normalized anti-normalization with Israel and dehumanization of Jews led to immediate celebrations by far-left and jihadi extremists after the October 7 sadistic massacre.

In the following days, the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism wrote a letter to university presidents that it was “horrified by the ubiquity of messaging from our university administrations that has expressed empathy for Israeli life,” essentially blessing the raping and mutilation of Jewish women and burning Jewish families alive.

Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian activist who speaks frequently on college campuses including Princeton, addressed a large march in London in January 2024 and declared “Zionism is apartheid. It’s genocide. It’s murder. It’s a racist ideology rooted in settler expansion and racial domination and we must root it out of the world. We must de-Zionize because Zionism is a death cult. Zionism is indefensible…. Our day will come but we must not be complacent. Our day will come but we must normalize massacres as the status quo.”

The calls for and support for violence have metastasized. Shellyne Rodriguez was fired from Hunter College after chasing a reporter with a machete. She was subsequently hired by Cooper Union which effectively normalized her threatening behavior. It was not a surprise that Jewish students at the school had to barricade themselves a library to avoid a mob after October 7.

The New York group Decolonize This Place, has actively called to “globalize the intifada.” It seeks to hunt diaspora Jews to confront them in their homes, offices and on the streets. Backers of the group like Cooper Union’s Rodriguez have advocated for stopping rent payments to Jews in a new form of BDS of Zionists.

Some people switch back-and-forth between advocating for violence and backing away from it. El-Kurd followed his fiery rhetoric calling for massacres to be normalized tweeting that he misspoke. Another extremist, Manolo De Los Santos from the People’s Forum told NPR that he wouldn’t condemn Hamas’s October 7 attack, but said at an event that he would celebrate the destruction of Israel.

*X feed of Jason Curtis Anderson showing Manolo De Los Santos telling a cheering crowd that the destruction of Israel will be the beginning of the destruction of capitalism everywhere.*

We are watching extremists loudly and proudly declare that their antisemitic and violent attitudes are normal, in a perverted attempt to win supporters. The radical jihadists and alt-left believe that if they can unashamedly strip Jews of their history, heritage, humanity, dignity, rights and property, the closeted antisemites will easily follow suit.

So far, it seems that they are dangerously being proved correct.